Over the last several years, interest in virtual reality (VR) has blossomed from a niche technology only accessible to military and other sophisticated or specialty end users to a consumer technology accessible and embraceable by any technologically sophisticated consumer. Thus, VR products have arisen from many of the major consumer electronics companies, as well as from several of the major Internet centric technology companies. Some of these products are more high-end, accessing high-powered computer equipment or gaming consoles to drive an extended VR experience, while others are more suited to short-term VR experiences and use head mounted displays (HMD) in which a smart phone may be placed to both drive and display the experience.
In either case, a virtual environment is often employed as a “hub” in which VR experiences, e.g., applications and/or so-called 360° videos, may be searched for, browsed, purchased, and experienced. In many cases, 2D content may be viewed, and the same displayed where the user appears to be watching the 2-D content on a large screen. Various environments have been employed for this purpose, including large-scale, where the user appears to be in a large theater, and even microscale, where the viewer is a tiny entity, viewing the 2-D content within a small-scale environment, e.g., the viewer is the size of an ant and is viewing a “large” screen but the same is only a few inches in size in the scale of the environment.
Multiple sources are known to serve 2-D content as well as 360° video. However, presentation of advertisement content has not changed. For example, the user may be required to watch a portion or all of an advertisement prior to viewing premium content.
Such technology does not take advantage of the unique opportunities of the VR environment, particularly with regard to its interactive nature. This aspect is particularly problematic as a VR environment is inherently interactive, as users are enabled to turn their “head” and to view the environment from any perspective. From the user's perspective, passive advertisements are a departure from the nature of this natively interactive experience.
It is noted that efforts have been made to provide advertisements within a VR environment. For 2D content, Hulu®'s VR application serves traditional video advertisements on the screen within the viewing environment. While providing the same within the context of VR, the experience is passive and generally non-engaging. In the context of 360° videos, Sky VR provides an application that launches 360° video advertisements during preassigned breaks in content, essentially serving as an advertisement server for VR. For example, advertisements, including 360° video advertisements, can be provided pre-roll, before the viewer starts an experience, or, e.g., mid-stream. However, in this application, a viewer lacks control over when and how the advertisement experience happens, as well as over the content they experience.
This Background is provided to introduce a brief context for the Summary and Detailed Description that follow. This Background is not intended to be an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter nor be viewed as limiting the claimed subject matter to implementations that solve any or all of the disadvantages or problems presented above.